British press is
reporting that Apple’s controversial big boast TV commercial touting
the new Macintosh G5 PowerMac as being “…the World’s
Fastest, most Powerful personal computer” has been banned by the
UK’s ITC.

The Independent
Television Commission, an advertising watchdog agency, has branded the
advert “misleading” and banned it from being broadcast anywhere
in the UK.

The “PA”
News reported, eight (8) viewers contacted the ITC to complain that
the claim was based on the results of limited tests in which the specification
of the computers used was configured to give Apple the best results.
Apple said the tests, carried out by an independent third party, were
“fair and even”.

But the ITC found
that the claim was not supported by independent reviews and that, at
best, the G5 was only “generally as fast” as its competitors.

In its advertising
complaints report, it ruled: “The ITC considered that there was
insufficient evidence to support the claim ‘world’s fastest,
most powerful personal computer’.

“Furthermore,
it shared one viewer’s doubt that the claim could be substantiated
at all because, as evidence for and against the claim had shown, computers
were constantly being updated and had many different applications and
benchmarks.”

It concluded that
“the advertising was misleading and ... should not be re-shown
in its current form”.

Linux OS was used as
well on the Dell PC, instead of the more optimized for the Intel Technology
Windows XP OS.

"It wasn't really
a fair test," said Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds, who said that
the Dell machines are capable of producing scores 30 percent to 40 percent
higher than those produced under Apple's methodology. "The reason
this happened is Apple had a third party go out and test a Dell under
less than optimal conditions."

Peter Glaskowsky,
editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report, said a company could get better
benchmark results using a Dell machine with Intel and Microsoft compilers
than with a Linux machine and GCC compiler. However, he also noted that
Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because
Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests.

Basically, Apple cheated
and a large number of industry expert agreed by voicing their opinion
to that effect. PC Magazine detailed the disparity in one of its issues
to great detail. Clemson University’s professor Mark Smothersman
even made the disparity of the testing a research project in their Computer
Sciences curriculum.

In our own Tech Lab
testing, using SPEC-Perf Benchmarks, we got the following results: